Alissa Nutting - Tampa

The prosecution objected to the relevance of nearly every question my attorney asked—the details, in their mind, didn’t matter as long as the crime had occurred. Most were sustained, but occasionally some slipped through. It was still a payoff to ask them and have the seeds of doubt planted in the minds of the jury: Was he sorry that it had happened? His smile said it all. Had he enjoyed our time together? Before an objection could even be made, he’d already begun nodding enthusiastically. “You began the sexual advances toward Mrs. Price, didn’t you, Boyd?” my attorney asked. This was a risk but a calculated one: I knew how much he’d want the credit and the attention; given the chance to claim initiation, he’d certainly accept. It was overruled but the jury knew he would’ve answered yes had he been allowed.

Bringing Jack to the stand was a much greater gamble. But since we’d brought Boyd back up, if we didn’t call Jack it would seem like we were scared of what he might say. Which, in fact, we were. Though there was nothing my attorney would ask him that would be a platform for his going off on a tangent, if he grew upset enough, he might yell something out of turn in anger or frustration that would look very bad to the jury. Dennis was confident he could spin any outbursts; in short, if Jack grew upset, Dennis would imply the anger stemmed from my cheating on him with Boyd. Still, when Jack took the stand a second time, I’d never been more nervous in my life. I knew that one deeply credible explosion on his behalf could easily send me to prison for years.

Looking at him was no small chore. Far more than Boyd, he’d aged greatly during the year that had passed since my arrest. I supposed his stint in juvie certainly hadn’t helped. His voice had dropped and was coarse with grief; even though he was still shy of sixteen, trauma had expedited the development of adulthood’s physical design upon his body. Although I’d always known he’d quickly age beyond attraction, I suppose a part of me had hoped that somewhere—in Jack’s eyes, perhaps, or in a fleeting expression—I could see that our relationship had been forever preserved, a sign that laying my body upon Jack’s had been like stopping the moving hand of a clock on at least one part of him. But the eager and credulous boy of eighth grade whom I still thought of with desire didn’t seem to be buried inside him at all. The fluorescent lights of the courtroom magnified his newly pronounced stubble; the ill-fitting suit he wore, likely one of Buck’s that his father had optimistically held on to in case he ever lost his spare tire, didn’t help either. Each moment of his testimony, I had to look away and think of the future and the hope of other boys in other places. His adult features felt like an insult of erasure, a failed experiment on my behalf that would never cease to finish failing.

“Jack,” my attorney began in an authoritative tone, “we all know the things you did with Mrs. Price.” Jack shifted in his seat and looked down at his lap, his lower lip wavering. “I just need you to tell us a few things honestly. Did she force you to kiss her?”

Jack exhaled too close to the microphone, causing the sound of a loud gust of wind to echo forth. “No.” I knew Jack well enough to guess what was spinning in his thoughts. Admitting that I hadn’t forced him was surely making Jack contemplate his own guilt in the entire situation—at not pushing me aside and calling 911 the night his father died, at losing all his old friends and his former home and way of life, at being sent to juvie after attacking Boyd. Jack started to cry.

My attorney approached the stand and laid a fatherly hand upon its wooden railing. His voice softened as though he and Jack were speaking completely in private, the only two people who would ever hear the words. “And did she force you to make love?”

“Objection,” said the prosecutor. “‘Making love’ is not an acceptable euphemism for statutory rape.”

“I’ll rephrase,” my attorney offered. “You had sex with Mrs. Price. Was it consensual? Did you want to do it?”

“Yes,” Jack answered. “I wanted it.” His voice was breaking; it sounded like a confession to something much greater.

“Thank you, Jack. I’m sorry you had to come here and do this.” My attorney returned to the table and sat. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

Despite being told he could step down, Jack stayed for a moment, crying, then looked over at me. It wasn’t at all the look of hatred I’d expected. Instead it was a look of mutual knowledge, Jack conveying to me his new understanding that the world could be a terrible place. His eyes said that no one at all was looking out for him or able to fix this essential flaw in life’s fabric; my eyes stared back and told him that he was right.

But the jurors and my attorney, and even the prosecution, apparently, saw something far different within the span of that gaze. “Dynamite!” Dennis proclaimed after court was adjourned for the day. “That look he gave you after testifying? It was like he wanted to crawl off the stand and into your lap! Plus the tears. The tears could not have been better. Hell, I felt ashamed for making him feel guilty about his own impulses. What that jury saw was a red-blooded American teenage boy asked to repent for nailing a hot blonde. I think our chances are good.”

We still had psychological experts ready to testify that I had a mood disorder and low impulse control, but Jack had proven himself to be a gift that kept on giving. Worried that jurors might sympathize with the boys for being attracted to me, and sympathize with me for having given in, the next morning the DA offered me a plea deal of four years’ probation that I accepted. I couldn’t go within one thousand yards of a school, couldn’t be unsupervised with anyone under the age of eighteen, and had to attend group meetings for convicted female sexual offenders. But I was free.

On the day of my release, my attorney wrapped me in a congratulatory hug that suggested we’d proven triumphant in a noble moral struggle. “We did it,” he announced proudly, then he gave me an exaggerated pat on the back; his eye flinched with what may have been a passing thought of discomfort, but only once. “Now keep your hands to yourself out there, hear me?”

A year after my release, I got permission to move away to a sleepy beach town and was reassigned to a probation officer who wears flip-flops. She commonly uses the phrase “your best estimate is fine” during our Q & A at my monthly check-ins. It’s low-key.

Currently, I work at a cabana bar for a seventy-year-old man named Dave who is overly fond of Viagra jokes. “I’ve had five heart attacks,” he’ll say, opening the flap of his Hawaiian shirt to reveal an impressive collection of sternum scars amidst his reddish-tan, papery skin, “and I probably wouldn’t survive a sixth. But dying might be worth getting it up for you.” I just roll my eyes and call him a pervert. His antics are easy to put up with because he pays cash under the table; so far, I’ve never had to tell anyone here, save my probation officer, my real name. I rent a grotesque trailer on the swampy edge of town so I don’t have neighbors I have to divulge my sex-offender status to; the nearest resident to me is a Citgo gas station three miles down the road. This town is nothing more than a place to regroup, and it’s temporary; for now the most important aspects of my self-care—restarting the oxygen-infusion and LED-light facials, adhering to a micronutrient diet for optimal skin elasticity—eat up nearly all of my earnings. Someday soon when my patience has rebounded, I’ll find another wealthy man to date, but after the ordeal of the trial, it’s nice, just for the present, to not have to do anything that repulses me other than live in squalor.