TIL my ex-roommate raped a girl in 2005,
confessed to it in 2014 to the police, and
got away with it because in Indiana you can't be prosecuted for for certain types of rape after five years have passed. Middle-class white kid, superficially charming, went to Purdue University. He was a total misogynist, but I just thought that was just him being an *******. Acerbic about his views at times, but ultimately
harmless. Turns out, nope, he really was a monster.
He really was the most intelligent person I've ever met. Well traveled, well educated, had his own house gifted to him by his parents (I rented a room from him), hell of a Judo player. Very charming, but in hindsight, if you spoke to him too long you could see where the gears were starting to loosen. He read
American Psycho like the KJV, had stacks of porn magazines in his room that reached to my shins, and was frequently depressed but had a surprise hair-trigger temper that could be set off by anything depending on his mood. I remember coming in from a night out one day and seeing that he had shaved his hair into a Mohawk and was assembling a shotgun on the living room table. Spent the rest of the night in my room. Pissed in a soda bottle.
Felt kind of bad about stiffing him on my final month's rent. (We had a falling out, I didn't have a lease or any legally binding contract, so I nope'd out on him and went to Dairy Queen.) Thought about sending him a check, Googled his name, and found a bunch of articles about how screwed up Indiana's rape laws are. Thought to myself "This can't be good," continued reading and I'm currently feeling really weird. I haven't seen the guy in sixteen years, I'm not responsible for anything he did or anything, but I laughed at his jokes a lot. We were always trying to come up with ways to outdo each other on being edgy, saying stupid **** that was supposed to be for laughs. But clearly, he meant every word of it, and in my time living with him, I was a total enabler, because I thought he was the funniest guy alive. This sounds fucking stupid, but this was my first time out in the world by myself and I thought this was what being a man was about. I thought this was how adults acted. I feel really fucking bad. This is a practical lesson I guess, in male toxicity and what that can actually mean for women. And now I feel tainted because by my actions and behavior, I once associated with a person like this. Seems like everyone is getting their Weinstein moment in the sun, now.