Since I first read Kristen Roupenian’s viral story, I’ve wondered: How did she know about me?
<< It wasn’t until six months after Charles’ death that I finally gained the courage to email Roupenian. I wasn’t sure whether she’d deny everything, or whether she’d be angry, or whether she’d answer me at all. From what I understood from David, she and Charles hadn’t kept in touch, so I assumed she didn’t know about his death. After my editor reached out first, letting her know about this essay, I wrote a brief message asking if she’d be willing to talk on the phone. She replied to say that she wanted to take some time to think and would reach out again soon. Then came a longer note.
“Dear Alexis,” she began. “I’ve spent the past several days struggling with the question of how to balance what is right for me with what I owe you.”
“When I was living in Ann Arbor, I had an encounter with a man. I later learned, from social media, that this man previously had a much younger girlfriend. I also learned a handful of facts about her: that she worked in a movie theater, that she was from a town adjacent to Ann Arbor, and that she was an undergrad at the same school I attended as a grad student. Using those facts as a jumping-off point, I then wrote a story that was primarily a work of the imagination, but which also drew on my own personal experiences, both past and present. In retrospect, I was wrong not to go back and remove those biographical details, especially the name of the town. Not doing so was careless.”
She went on to emphasize that she’d never had access to any information about my personal life beyond that. She clarified that she didn’t think it was fair to characterize the character of Margot as fully based on me. But she continued:
“I can absolutely see why the inclusion of those details in the story would cause you significant pain and confusion, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am about that. I hope it goes without saying that was never my intention, and I will do what I can to rectify any harm it caused. I was not prepared for the amount of attention the story received, and I have not always known how to handle the consequences of it, both for myself and other people. … It has always been important for my own well-being to draw a bright line, in public, between my personal life and my fiction. This is a matter not only of privacy but of personal safety. When “Cat Person” came out, I was the target of an immense amount of anger on the part of male readers who felt that the character of Robert had been treated unfairly. I have always felt that my insistence that the story was entirely fiction, and that I was not accusing any real-life individual of behaving badly, was all that stood between me and an outpouring of not only rage but potentially violence.”
It took me a few days to fully process what she’d written. I appreciated that she was sorry. I could understand how unprepared and overwhelmed she felt by just how much attention “Cat Person” received. But I was also frustrated. I could sense in her email that she hoped I might feel guilty about potentially encouraging the misdirected rage of her male readers. And I was angry, still—that someone who knows so intensely about what it’s like to watch your readers misconstrue fiction as autobiography would have dragged others, without their knowledge, into that discomfort. >>
