I felt a small surge of courage. Since Dr. Kerrow had explained to me about statutory consent, I’d held the idea like a fabulous gemstone—too precious to trot out, almost vulgar to wear, but a resource that might buy me passage in war. The law, it turns out, anticipates naivete, or at least allows that when a child and an adult engage in a sexual act, power will occupy so much of the province of desire (if indeed there is any) that wanting would be inauthentic. Consent is not possible. No matter what anyone else claimed, the law said it was not my fault.
