Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

I believe he is not absolved of the title simply because he ran out of time.

Two long, wooden Q-tips were stuck inside my anus. The sailboat was doing its best.

I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy.

I didn’t know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed.

Google finally sat me down and broke the news.

Mostly I feared what would happen when I experienced the assault through their eyes; their sadness would scare me.

I knew they called me finger lickin’ good.

He was the one who lost everything. I was just the nobody it happened to.

I wanted to trim all the fat, all these distractions, to show you the meat of the story. I saw: man goes to a party, kisses three women, finds one alone who cannot speak, takes her into the trees, strips her, sticks his hand up her, is tackled by two men who notice she isn’t moving. He then denies running, can say nothing about the victim except that she enjoyed it. So take out the whiskey at 10:15, the urination, the younger sister’s name, the Olympic freestyle, at the heart that’s your whole damn story.

Fingers can be interlaced without getting tangled. One hand can create a tiny chair for one chin.

But it bothered me that having a boyfriend and being assaulted should be related, as if I, alone, was not enough.

I learned it was expensive to be assaulted.

Why weren’t my boundaries inherent?

I did nothing wrong. I am strong. I have a voice. I told the truth.

Nice: I’m tired of being good, being nice, in this life, where rebellion is not wearing my retainer for one night. I want to evoke feelings, create enemies, appear a little corrupt, I want to bitch out some bitches, I want to fuck some shit up.

To the dick who stuck his dick in my passed-out friend.

Are you self-conscious because your dick is shorter than a ruler, so you got her drunk and gone enough to rule her? Because your fleshy dangler didn’t find your hand that handsome, your wang banger needed a real companion, so you got her alone, put the sword in the stone, you had her violated, she’s degraded while you’re the one shallower than a kiddie pool, I pity your lack of dignity, pity your—

I’ll have you bawling about your balls while you’re calling me the meanest, and that is how I’ll vanquish your fetus-sized penis and to top it off . . . I’ll shoot it.

Maybe in this context, this is what great looked like.

Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.

It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do.

Good and bad things come from the universe holding hands. Wait for the good to come.

This was no longer a fight against my rapist, it was a fight to be humanized.

I wondered how it happened that I was now spending more time with my rapist than my friends.

I liked to imagine them as a three-headed dragon in a white coat, snapping mouths and metal tools, fighting off anything that came after me.

We are taught assault is likely to occur, but if you dressed modestly, you’d lower the chances of it being you. But this would never eradicate the issue, only redirecting the assailant to another unsuspecting victim, off-loading the violence.

Pain, when examined closely, became clarity.

When Brock explained he only ran because he was scared the guys would hurt him, Alaleh asked, You weren’t concerned that they might try to hurt Chanel? He said, I didn’t look back at her.

And then finally, we received jury question No. 5 which states or asks, “Is contact with the inner lining of labia majora or any portion of labia minora considered penetration?”

I promised myself I would never question whether I deserved better. The answer would always be yes and yes and yes.

So many of us have read about you. When I saw this card in the store, I knew I had to get it for you because this little girl reminds me of your strength. I’m sending this card to let you know you are not alone. I can’t imagine the hell you’ve been through. We are in awe of your courage and resilience and badassery. Know that you have a huge army of soldiers behind you.

To him, my lost job, my damaged hometown, my small savings account, my stolen pleasures, had all amounted to ninety days in county jail.

My pain was never more valuable than his potential.

You are worth more than three months. Again. You are worth more than three months.

A woman had taken stunning photographs of pine trees to replace the triggering memory with beauty.

I believe, out of the millions who knew I was brave and important, I was the last to know it.

How do you come after me, when it is all of us?

A woman who said she was sitting on the couch with her daughter, surrounded by boxes, preparing to flee her abusive ex-husband, telling me she knew they were no longer alone. A mother who plucked the holiday card of her toddler from the inside of her cubicle, scribbling on the back, This is who you’re saving. A wife who woke up her husband, turning on the side light, to tell him her story. I received an email from a sixteen-year-old who said that for the first time in two years she could finally get out of bed in the morning. That’s the image I am left with, the now-empty bed.

There is a certain carefree feeling that was stripped from me the night of the assault. How to distinguish spontaneity from recklessness? How to prove nudity is not synonymous with promiscuity?

The phrase, sexual assault, is a little misleading, for it seemed to be less about sex, more about taking. Sexual assault is stealing. One-sided wants, the feeling of overriding the other.

Brock wrote: I just existed in a reality where nothing can go wrong or nobody could think of what I was doing as wrong.

Victims are not fractions; we are whole.

The only credit Brock can take is for assaulting me, and he could never even admit to that.

Leave the guilt here. It doesn’t deserve any more of your family’s time.

Leave your pain here and go out and do your magnificent things.

On July 25, 2018, Brock’s appellate attorney appeared in court before a panel of three judges to present his case that Brock had only intended to have outercourse. The Mercury News reported Justice Franklin Elia responding, I absolutely don’t understand what you are talking about, which summed up everything I could say.

I don’t believe it was my fate to be raped. But I do believe that here we are is all we have.

If I have forgiven him, it’s not because I’m holy. It’s because I need to clear a space inside myself where hard feelings can be put to rest.

This book does not have a happy ending. The happy part is there is no ending, because I’ll always find a way to keep going.

To the Swedes. You’ve taught us that we all bear responsibility to speak up, wrestle down, make safe, give hope, take action. We do not have to wait for something wrong to happen to be a Swede. Being the Swede begins with respecting bodily autonomy, the language we choose, the understanding that consent can never be assumed or overridden. We must protect the vulnerable and hold each other accountable. May the world be full of more Carls and Peters.