One of the students who harassed me in my Spring 2017 math class had previously used my graphing calculator during the midterm; he had forgotten his, and probably would have failed the midterm if I hadn't lent him my calculator for the entire time that he needed to use it. A few weeks later, he began harassing me; I guess someone told him "about" me, and he wanted to prove that he hated me.
One of the students who harassed me in my Summer Session I 2017 French class had taken pictures of my textbook and my workbook every week from the beginning of class, for weeks, because he hadn't bought the books. He was reading answers from the pictures in his phone when he was sitting behind me and harassing me during the last week when I was in class. He couldn't have done the assignments every week without my having allowed him to take pictures of what the assignments were.
When I moved out of my apartment a couple of months ago, I donated my computer monitor to the Women's Center in Cambridge, which was another agency which had been sympathetic but useless in preventing my losing my apartment. The monitor was the only part of my computer that had survived either the move from the first apartment where I was victimized by voyeurism to storage or the move from storage to the second apartment where I was victimized by voyeurism.
Today, when I was leaving the Women's Center, where I'd had no conflict with anyone, I tried to tell the director briefly about a situation which I thought was not that important but also might be something she should address. She was very abrupt with me and said "You'll have to schedule time to talk to me or send me an email." I said "I don't know when I'll have time to do that, since I have my own life." She said "OK," so I said "Maybe you should talk to the volunteers about not having what they think are humorous conversations about sex in the kitchen; it might be triggering to some of the women." They are new volunteers and I'm sure they weren't trying to upset anyone. The director, who is probably 10 years younger than I am, immediately raised her voice and starting talking to me as if I'm stupid, which is what people do a lot when you're homeless. She said "You're still talking to me about something when I have told you not to talk to me about it right now."
I said, because it's about time I said to someone just like this "FUCK you," and I'm sure that's what she was hoping I would say, because she sounded very happy when she told me "Lena, you are banned for the rest of the week."
I had walked from my apartment to the Women's Center a couple of months ago with the computer monitor in my arms, my heart breaking for the millionth fucking time.
I also don't even know how many years I have spent blogging about how people need to donate to the Women's Center.
Copyright L. Kochman, July 20, 2017 @ 3:03 p.m./edited @ 5:34 p.m.
