I took German class all through high school. Never got great at it, but wanted to learn. Sophomore year, I had moved back to MD from CO. The dumb "Trenchcoat Mafia" rumors stopped after getting into a couple of physical fights in shop class. A clique was bullying me non stop and I finally had enough. But German class presented another challenge because it had boys that were incredibly pushy. One guy had bright red hair and wore a kilt, sending me index cards every day during class, pouring his heart out re feelings about me and the entitled, angry pouting when I didn't reciprocate. But big red's guilt tripping, insistence and sulking wasn't even the biggest issue. It was the guy just left of him. I forget his stupid name. When he heard that I was dating someone and later ran into us at Blockbuster (im OLD) this guy constantly gave me shit for it. Especially because my bf was Salvadoran. I remember being asked to walk up and down between the rows of desks before class because he wanted to see if I could still walk straight after "getting fucked by that Mexican guy last weekend". My mind has blotted out most of our interactions but it was frequent enough that I finally went to the guidance counselor about it. The next thing I remember: year book signing day, end of senior year, after most people left the German classroom, was him coming up from behind me as I was looking out the window at the courtyard. He told me that he admitted what he had done to the counselor and everything, but he had a question to ask. I was like...yeah? And he asked whether this incident would hurt his chances to get into the honor society. That's probably the dumbest fucking question I've ever been asked my entire life. You know that relentless sexual harassment I've inflicted you with for years? Could that possibly damage my future? Of course a man thinks that he gets to decide the consequences of his own actions. When I think about the unreal amount of hatred, rage and fury I've had to sublimate in the face of sexual aggression because no one I've met has been worth catching a case for, I think about that day. Not just because of his audacity in asking that question to begin with but because when I got word he suffered a tragic loss, it entered my mind that some kind of twisted cosmic justice was being meted out. It wasn't, but the shrapnel of that very fury framed it that way. And really, nothing was learned from it anyway.