» Karma

Why sexual harrassment just makes sense.
A few years ago, while entrenched in the golden warmth of higher education at a university in New York City, I attended a party thrown in my dorm by one of my best friends, Colin.

Now Colin had gone to great troubles to ensure that a certain girl, Laura, would be in attendance, as he obsessed over her curves on a daily basis and was determined to introduce her to his fleshy length. Funnily enough, after an awkward introduction, they actually got along like a house on fire. That is, until Laura's best friend, Jill, ruined everything by playing a finely polished game of 'block the cock'. She tore Colin up in front of Laura and dragged her out of his room. Cue tears.

Now, at this time, I was rather interested in computer graphics and had cultured a decent Photoshop skillset. I'd also been taking photos at the party. So after watching Colin mope around for a couple of days, I decided to cheer him up by superimposing his and Jill's heads onto a particularly nasty caveman porn picture I'd come across - it looked like he was doing her from behind while pulling back her hair as if she were some sort of bad pony.

When I showed this to Colin, he exploded with laughter and asked for a printout. I complied without thinking, just glad to see my friend happy again.

Somehow, this printout drifted from room to room on our floor, ending up in a study room, and then, one night, was pasted on Jill's door by an unknown culprit.

Obviously this did not go down well with Jill. She raised a huge stink with her RA, who took the printout door-to-door, questioning all of the building's residents as to the picture's origins. When he confronted me, I owned up to making it, given that I didn't really see the harm in my actions and he reassured me that nothing bad would happen.

A week later I was seated in front of the Housing Committee's judicial tribunal being told that I was a 'sexual monster' who had ruined a young girl's university life - she couldn't enter the building before midnight for fear of running into me or my friends, she had earned a new nickname (Betty Rubble), and she wanted blood. Mine.

Within another week, I had been kicked out to another dorm, designated a persona non grata of my old dorm, and placed on academic probation for sexual harassment.

Keep in mind that I was the president of my old dorm and an honors scholar. Talk about a scandal.

However, my dad reversed the blow by dropping $200 on me when I was forced to move, saying that I should forget the whole thing and have a crazy weekend!

Some might think that this was karma enough, but noooo, the fates weren't satisfied yet.

Two months later I was at a Bulgarian nightclub when I spotted Jill and Laura, both horribly drunk, flirting with a friend of mine in the corner. I decided to ignore them and kept on dancing, but within minutes they had spotted me and started whispering to each other. As they approached I imagined the worst and continued to ignore them. Imagine my surprise when I was offered a threesome! Given that Colin was still obsessed with Laura, and that I'd rather eat a bucket of rancid meat than touch Jill, I turned them down politely and moved away from them, into the crowd.

Later that night I entered the subway to head home, where I was overjoyed to find Jill face down in a pool of her own vomit, blowing bubbles and spreading it over the concrete with her devil tongue.

Score another for karma!

But this STILL wasn't enough for the fates. Though I felt they went a little too far with this one...

About a year had passed since the threesome proposition when I heard a horrible story. Jill and Laura were living together in the East Village, and Jill had brought some random guy home from a bar. She had work early the next morning and so decided to leave this stranger in her bed to excuse himself when he was ready to go. Laura got talking to him before he left, and he suggested that they grab breakfast together. She agreed, though he mentioned that he would have to stop by his hotel room to grab some cash from the minisafe. Again, she agreed, and followed him up to his room.

The second he opened the door, two other guys jumped out and pulled her inside. They kept her there for a while, the men taking turns raping, sodomizing and beating her, before leaving her in the room, hardly able to move. She finally reported the attack to the police after a couple months, but refused to testify for fear of being attacked again.

Talk about a horrible story right?

Well, it's not quite over.

Karma truly made a farce of the entire situation when the following summer, the same Housing Committee that found me guilty HIRED me to design their new print materials, apparently based on the strength of my Photoshop skills!

I guess that I'm due for something pretty nasty. Still waiting...!

(names have been changed)
(Wed 27th Feb 2008, 21:07, More)