Nothing’s Serious Until It Is

It was 2010 and I had just started university in Bogotá, Colombia. At seventeen, I was just as opinionated as I am now but lacked the words to express myself. I had gotten great scores on the Colombian version of the SATs and figured I’d start with psychology and see where that took me.

Bogotá was a new city. I was one of fourteen Jews at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, but luckily a non-Jewish friend I used to party with in high school enrolled in psychology with me. She’d go on to become a neuropsychologist, and I’d go on to do whatever this is.

My party friend started a serious relationship about a month into the semester and invited me on an overnight trip to the outskirts of Bogotá with her boyfriend and all of his friends. I never had the traditional American college experience, and the trip was the closest I got to a frat boy. If you’re a woman and just felt your body tense up— don’t worry. That’s not where this is going.

It’s funny how things start unseriously. Even as I make my analogy, and yes, I’m getting there, I’m aware of the latest college boys in the news making it difficult. Just a joke and boys will be boys are things we’ve heard too much. They come out as an instinctive excuse to separate the crimes we see in real life from words or boyish behavior. Girls start hearing them early on, making it harder to explain why it’s really not just a joke.

There were few girls on this trip. I think I remember it being just us two, and though I would soon be in a relationship, I was single and fair game. Frat Boy was one of the guys on this trip trying his luck. He may have been nineteen at the time. He was direct in his approach and wanted to take me on a date after the trip. I wasn’t interested, but I also wasn’t not interested. I was seventeen at a party. Sue me.

This wasn’t a disrespectful crowd. They were the kind of nice boys who’d open doors, carry your luggage inside, ask if you were comfortable, and not pressure you to drink. Yet, as we all drank, Frat Boy grew obnoxious. I tried to avoid him. I told him I wanted to be left alone. Everyone could see he was desperately clinging to me all night.

Five of us stayed up to watch the sunrise over the mountains. It was cold. We huddled under large woven blankets as the alcohol gave way to our collective hangovers. Frat Boy, of course, was there. As we chatted over warm cups of coffee, I outed myself as a Jew.

“You’re Jewish?”, Frat Boy asked, though I knew I had spoken clearly. I still don’t understand why. I nodded.

“I’m a Neo Nazi. I want your family’s ashes in coffins.”

There was shock. I was stunned, like you probably are. This wasn’t my first experience with these kind of remarks. I remained quiet. So did the others. I was afraid. It didn’t stop. I don’t fully remember what he said next.

I’ve had nasty things said to me. I’m a woman. I’m an outspoken woman. I’m an outspoken Jewish woman. In that mostly friendly environment, I thought there would be a general male consensus that that’s not the way to speak to a woman— that that’s not the way to speak to anyone. I froze and hoped one of the perhaps more sober guys would step in and stand up for me. The best one could do was put his arm around my shoulder and try to calm me as Frat Boy continued.

When I talked to my Party Friend about it, she dismissed it. Frat Boy was drunk. I shouldn’t feel scared. She was still a teenager, too. I don’t blame her for not understanding what I lacked the words to express.

Sixteen years later, I definitely have words. I hope they’re the right ones. I twist them around before scribbling them down and wonder if they make sense to anyone.

I see the need some across the political spectrum have to squish legitimate concerns about safety into just a joke. into boys will be boys, and I want to forget my scribbles and scream.

As they try to turn us into unfeeling, loud, pointy-nosed caricatures, I want to give in to the part of me that’s still angry at the seventeen-year-old girl who kept quiet while a sexually frustrated Frat Boy spewed vile on her. That part of me wants to scream and hope the temporary satisfaction of getting it out of my system will somehow fix everything— abroad and at home— that has compounded into the just-a-joke-ing of antisemitism.

A couple of years into my life in Bogotá, Frat Boy asked Party Friend for my number. According to her, he wanted to apologize for his behavior that night. I consented to hearing him out.

He never called.