Gaps

I got a job immediately after high school working with my mom at a foodservice inside a microchip manufacturing plant. I was only 17 when I started but it was handed to me more or less on a platter and I really wanted to buy myself a car.

After training, I opted to work the graveyard shift. This amounted to three 12 hour shifts a week. I was able to avoid traffic, and have 4 days off. I thought I was living the dream.

My role was customer-facing. I wasn’t in the kitchen, I was the cashier. I rang people up and handled the money. Over the course of the 12 hours we would have 3-4 scheduled “rush” times that coincided with the breaks and lunches of the staff working on the fabrication floor. I would see the same 150 people several times a night and, of course, my job was to be friendly.

After about a month on this shift, a co-worker (who DECIDEDLY did not have my best interest at heart) told me “Albert (not his real name) really thinks you are cute.”

I remember being put off by this information as I knew that Albert was almost twice my age. In addition to the age difference, which I immediately found creepy, I didn’t find him in the least bit attractive. He asked me – more than once – to go on a date and I refused.

Eventually, scheduling conflicts had moved me back to days and I wasn’t running in to him anymore at work, which was a relief. I didn’t think about it beyond that point until suddenly he was working days as well. Gossip ran rampant around the fab, and a friend of his told a friend of mine he had done it so he could keep seeing me during breaks.

I was annoyed by this, but was too naive to understand how problematic it was. Days were much busier, so he couldn’t really force me into protracted interactions like he could at night. I saw less of him, though he was always around.

My mother, who was fully aware of all of this, kept a running dialogue about how maybe I should just “give him a chance.” Always preferring inappropriately young male partners herself, she saw the 11 year age gap as a negligible consideration. In her mind he was a “catch” because the staff in the fab made “decent” money and told me I should see his attention as a flattering “opportunity.”

So, after much hectoring, from him and my mother, I finally agreed we could go on a date. He suggested we go to the beach. This is a pretty typical first date scenario since it’s only about an hour or so from where we were working.

He drove. I was more or less at his mercy all day. The date itself was… fine, but I had no intention of seeing him again. I still found the age gap creepy and him personally somewhat odious.

We were headed back after a long day out and he wanted to stop at his place for some reason before taking me home. I took the opportunity to call my mom, who after YEARS of not caring where I was or what I was doing, was suddenly INCENSED I hadn’t told her where I was going. She promptly advised me she was kicking me out.

I was dumbfounded. Albert immediately suggested I stay with him! What a perfect solution! Being not-yet-of-legal-age meant I couldn’t sign a lease and get my own place even IF my just slightly over minimum wage job would have allowed me to afford that.

So, in I moved.

I realize in retrospect that my mother – far from actually being upset about my lack of communication – saw this as an opportunity to be rid of her parental obligations. She had never wanted to be a mom and was so looking forward to being able to stop that she had no problem hastening that result. Again, she saw him as some kind of windfall in the form of a lovesick fab nerd.

It only lasted about 6 weeks. I didn’t like him to begin with and liked him less as time went on. For his part, he took me to meet his parents as though we were in a serious relationship, and spoke near constantly about how in love with me he was.

Ultimately, I told my mom it was over and I needed to come home and she relented.

I didn’t think about how I found myself in the situation for very long because I was just so relieved to be out of it. The HR people at work eventually put him on the opposite shift because he kept approaching me to see if I had changed my mind.

Around 10 years later, I saw him come in to the furniture store where I was then working. I recognized him immediately. My belly started churning with anxiety the moment I noticed him. I took off from behind the front desk and tried to find a spot in the store I might not have to bump into him. He was with a woman and a child and I was hoping to watch the door until they left before coming back to the front.

Somehow, he not only found where I was, but he also managed to do so absent the people he came in with. I stood my ground as he approached even though I was WILDLY uncomfortable.

“I thought that was you,” he said. “I didn’t recognize you at first because you’ve gotten so tall.”

To which I replied, “Well yes, I finished going through puberty.”

He was affronted.

“No! You weren’t that young!” he spluttered.

I didn’t bother to answer him, just turned on my heel and walked away.

At the time, I was about 28. I thought about how when I looked at a 17 year old, I recognized them as children. Which they, in fact, are. As I got older I understood more fully how egregious his behavior was and how manipulative and toxic my mother was as well.

All the references to 15 year old girls as “young” or “underage” women are willfully obtuse and self-serving. No one that age has the experience, maturity, or understanding of the complex dynamics present in a sexual encounter with someone in a position of power over them. They literally cannot consent.

There are times in life where an age gap in a relationship can provide both parties with perspective and opportunities for growth. That is only possible after each person has developed a degree of maturity that allows them to understand what they are agreeing to.

The larger issue is a gap in compassion. A gap in empathy. A gap in the place where the recognition of the right of a child not to be objectified should be. This is a void filled with self-serving justifications and howling insecurity. Anyone content to defend that gap is contemptible, indeed.