Tampa

by Alissa Nutting

realizing my true attractions lagged several years behind.

This is actually pretty accurate for how people discover they’re pedophiles.

who would second-guess and recall the moment only in the dark, liquored sleep of his loneliest adult moments:

She’s essentially stating that this is abuse and she is a predator.

For the rest of his life, part of him would always be on that dance floor, unsure and hungry for clarity. So

This is called trauma.

I’d stolen from him,

Predatory. Unrelenting.

sliding forward and sitting down, the hot bareness between my legs pressing against its cold layer of varnish.

Animalistic behavior.

How appropriate; you are foul to me and I just wallpapered my cervix with the name of a teenage boy.

Truly animalistic. A slave to her own desires. No remorse.

Why did anyone pretend human relationships had value?

That’s more than a pedophile; she’s a psychopath.

They were a constant drone of stimulation; their requests hummed aloud throughout my life like a never-ending soundtrack.

Sex addiction.

He also came off as clingy, which could prove to be downright toxic.

Says the woman who is the definition of toxic.

I needed, what I desperately hoped to find in Jack, was a student whom I could wear down. One

"Wear down."

“Mrs. Price,” Marissa chided, her acne-riddled face suddenly full of ancient knowledge. “We are so not grown-ups.” “But can’t you act it?” I said encouragingly. “Can’t you pretend?”

Like you're pretending?

his mouth not so large, like Ford’s, as to make my own tongue seem insubstantial inside

Power.

“What if every few weeks I started observing Janet’s classroom during my grading period?

This is a wildly inappropriate conversation. She should not have admin control.

Jack, do you realize how lucky you are?” Buck turned around and gave his humiliated son a wink.

Problematic.

he looked like a child who’d been forced to share a toy.

She has no issue thinking of herself as a toy because it is how she views others.

When he came in my mouth he let out a protracted wail and covered his face with his hands.

Rape. Using his trauma to sexualize him in his most vulnerable state. All of it has been rape, of course, but this scene just nails that point home.

Furthermore, the power dynamic would be in his favor if he came on to me.

The power dynamic can NEVER be in the hands of a child. It doesn't matter if the child "comes onto" the adult. The power imbalance is too severe. She is truly delusional.

Seconds later, Jack began to run.

This is the moment where he realizes everything that she is and that has been done to him.

“Dear,” she said quietly, extending the garment. “Put this on.”

If this had been a man running naked with a knife with bloody handprints on him, the response would have been so different.

There was nothing to do but cover my ears and begin making a high-pitched scream.

Juvenile.

“If that were true, it would seem to go toward establishing the fact that my client is a troubled young woman desperately searching for love. Not the ‘ravenous pedophile’ the DA has been referring to her as in media interviews.”

Double standards.

It was as though in merely following my own desire I’d been catapulted far beyond the intended lands of pleasure into a realm of punishment.

She is a predator who admits that she's a predator, who doesn't value life, who is a textbook psychopath.

“If you were a teenage male,” the commentator began, pointing a leering finger back at the photo, “would you call a sexual experience with her abuse?”

Foul.

His eyes said that no one at all was looking out for him or able to fix this essential flaw in life’s fabric; my eyes stared back and told him that he was right.

Yes, the messaging here that women can be predators too is certainly powerful, but I think more power lies in the depiction of the male victim. Jack's life has been ruined by this women. This poor child has been subjected to so much.