"A little over thirteen years ago, in my second semester of graduate school, I was in a novel-writing class with the late Margaux Fragoso. She was writing about a sexual relationship between a child and an adult that lasted into the child’s own adulthood, ending when the pedophile committed suicide. In our workshop, several of my classmates eviscerated the pages they’d been presented with.
“What a ridiculous premise,” a brassy redhead declared. “Like any child would willingly stay in a relationship with her abuser.”
“Yeah, seriously, dude,” a younger guy added, his wide-spread legs sprawling out into the room.
“I mean, like, why wouldn’t she just tell her mother?” He nodded to the woman who’d spoken.
“Sorry, but it makes zero sense. No one would do that.”
I knew the truth when I heard it, but I didn’t say a word as they talked, just watched Margaux’s shoulders slump as she scribbled in her notebook, the sweep of her dark hair hiding her cheeks. She wore a teddy bear t-shirt, with white and pale pink high-tops.
There was something vulnerable, almost childlike about Margaux’s demeanor and the sound of her voice that seemed to bring out the bully in many of my classmates; the same ones had been similarly dismissive of her work the previous semester. Their attitude sparked our friendship, and I’d written to her after one especially nasty workshop to tell her what I hadn’t dared to say aloud: that they’d been unfair to her work. She’d responded that there was no way she’d value criticism from someone who wrote “arrogant rambling garbage that he thinks is reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye.” That made me realize she was far less vulnerable than I thought, at least where her writing was concerned."
~ Kim Vose
The Boogeyman
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