Isaac Byrne - Tolerance

The young woman continued. “So, it’s been kind of rough, I guess, since the photos leaked. Lots of people in my classes, all my friends, saw them. Lots of people calling me a slut, hitting on me even after I try to tell them no. That kind of thing. I try to explain I was just indulging a co-worker, but they never understand. Honestly, I think explaining it makes things worse.”

“Ja, that can be difficult. Those of us who know DJ understand the need to treat him with a little extra discretion, but I’m sure to others, it must seem strange.”

“Yeah. At least one of my professors saw them; he kept looking at me through lecture, and I knew he was just seeing me naked and covered in DJ’s semen. I haven’t been able to go back. I… missed a test.”

The manager frowned. “Now Emily, you must keep up your grades. You’re a student first, and an employee second. Your work issues mustn’t be allowed to interfere with academics.”

Emily nodded. “I understand. It’s just… when my parents saw them…” She fought back tears, and slowly lost the battle as she continued. “They didn’t even contact me. I called home, just to check in, and… my mother told me she and my father had seen that their daughter was engaged in pornography, squandering her collegiate opportunities for cheap thrills. I tried to tell her how it had really been, but I couldn’t make her understand. She…” Emily choked back a sob. “She told me I was no longer her daughter. I called my father, but he won’t even answer the phone. They didn’t respond to my emails, unfriended me online…”

She was crying too hard to keep getting words out. Katja patted her shoulder softly, offering her tissues and letting her cry it out. It was some time before she could continue.

“My whole family, even my sister, won’t talk to me. My parents, they had to break their backs to pay for me to go here, and now everybody thinks I’m just abusing their trust, that I’m some kind of…” she shook her head, shifted to something she could manage to talk about.

“I don’t have anywhere to go for fall break,” she said in a whisper-quiet voice.

Katja warmly pulled the despondent young woman into a hug, and Emily returned it tightly. “You can stay here in the dorm,” she said. “You’ll be the only one here, but I won’t have you out on the streets.”

With those words, Emily first consciously realized that, when the school year ended, she was homeless.

Brittney Jenner had lost her virginity at the age of twelve at the hands of her step-father, Earl.

She’d been old enough then to know she was pretty, to have some idea that boys wanted to do things with her. Her presence often seemed to turn casual social situations into games of truth-or-dare, spin the bottle, seven minutes in heaven, or other juvenile means of getting a little experience in things sexual without getting too scary about them. Since childhood her mother, Heather, had entered young Brittney in child beauty pageants, where she’d done well—regional winner three years, and state champion when she was ten. Heather had been disappointed in her 32nd place at nationals; she’d been grounded from sweets for three months. The school psychologist who had diagnosed her with anorexia later that year had insisted Brittney stop participating in activities that valued her body above her mind as part of her treatment.

Of course, he couldn’t keep her from going into middle school or back home, so it was a fruitless sentiment.

Earl had married Heather when her daughter was eleven. He was a well-to-do lawyer in town, wealthy and connected, and the girls had needed the financial support and stability. Heather had been only fifteen when she’d had to drop out of school to give birth to Brittney, and while her parents had helped as best they could, things had always been tight. Brittney loved her mother fiercely for how much she worked and sacrificed for her. Heather would do anything for her daughter to have a better life. Even marrying Earl.

Earl offered stabilitity. He also offered a mean streak a mile wide and the alcoholism to keep it fresh at hand. Brittney had seen how he abused her mother, especially if he’d been drinking. They tried to hide it, but even Earl’s house was only so big, and noise carried. Heather always tried to protect her by lying about how bad it was, and Brittney protected her back by lying about believing it.

When Earl finally branched out into forcing himself on his young step-daughter, she just kept lying. She quickly learned that refusing him, souring the experience for him, only served to throw fuel on the fires of his rage, and it made it worse on Brittney, and also usually sent him laying into her mother, too. She could have handled the bruises and violations if they didn’t also lead the same for Heather. She wanted to tell someone, but Earl golfed with the sheriff and the county judge once a month; trying to turn him in would be suicide. Maybe literally. With nothing to be done about it, Brittney learned to do her best to keep him happy so he wouldn’t last out at her mother. As often, anyway.

No matter what that took.

She soon learned that this was just how men were built, and attractive women like herself, like Heather, just brought it out in them. Her first boyfriend to raise a hand to her was Dave, the high school’s star running back, and a steroid abuser to boot. He’d worked her over good when she accidentally caught him using, but she’d learned from Earl how to make up with him after.

Not that all the boys she dated hit her. She’d gotten very good at reading them, at preemptively staving off that sort of aggression. She could dress a certain way, smile at them just so, say the right flattering words, and they’d be happy enough with her to never raise a hand. Always wary of the possibility of being forced, she made sure to be as receptive as possible to men’s needs so there was never a chance. Then she could at least pretend everything was the way it was supposed to be.

Besides, guys got tired of her soon enough anyway. She was beautiful and accommodating, but still, she didn’t usually have much to talk about with them. Brittney didn’t really have many interests guys would care about; she liked unicorns, and romance movies, and sappy poetry, and pink things. Stereotypical? Sure, but she liked it, and none of it made it harder to protect herself, so she didn’t see the harm in it.

College had been more of the same, only with more alcohol flowing around to make it all more bearable. Her mom had become a heavy drinker over the years, too; she got it now. Things were easier if you didn’t really remember things or feel them to begin with. And she hadn’t yet met a guy who found her more interesting sober than drunk.

Then she met DJ. She had really liked him at first. She’d attended his little floor meeting at the start of the school year, and he had a very reassuring vibe about him. He talked about how his job was to make sure all the people on their floor had a great experience, and he’d help any way he could. He’d talked about consent and party safety and all that, and even though she thought he was preposterously naïve about it all, it was a beautiful fantasy, his idea of a man who didn’t want her to be drunk the first time he slept with her, who would stop to ask her for permission, who would care if she said no. If only guys were really like that. She might have even said yes if he’d asked her out, but it was writ large on the tablets of fate that the DJ Swansons and the Brittney Jenners of the world weren’t meant to be.

Then, he’d come into her room one night and shown her he was like the others. He’d beaten up Brayden, pretended to be coming to her rescue but then fucked her just like Brayden had been going to. She hadn’t noticed it at first, that odd way he had about him, how people were so unwilling to contradict him, push back when he said something, refuse him.