Reclaiming Plaid

*Some names have been changed.

I found the skirt when I wasn't looking for it. I was waiting for a friend to try on a dress and idly flipping through the rack when my eye caught a glimpse of a swatch of plaid. With a jolt in my stomach, I shoved through to the back where two red plaid skirts dangled lazily from their hangers. I snatched them both and dashed back to the dressing room, praying one of them would fit. The first one was too big, hanging sloppily from my hips. But the second, it fit like it was made just for me. The length was perfect; short enough to be tempting, but not so short it became vulgar. The fabric was soft, the pleats swished gently against my thighs. I gave a giggle of joy from my dressing room and spun around, letting the pleats catch air and swirl around me.

I decided to wear it to work the next day. It was perfect for fall. Donning it, the long varnished hallways of St. Mary's, dim from their yellow lamps, swam into my mind. Opening my bedroom door I could feel the heft from the big wooden doors from my elementary school that led to the platform where we waited for our parents at the end of the day. As I walked to my car, leaves making satisfying crunches under my heels, I could smell fresh sharpened pencils. Right before I got into my car, a horn sounded in the King Street traffic. I imagined it was the large gold bell swinging from Mrs. Ambrosia's hand signaling us to line up in the church parking lot at the end of recess.

I was walking through the rows of cubicals when his bald head popped around the fabric wall. "Katie...nice skirt." I was naive enough to think he was being polite and genuine. "Thank you!" I chirped and shuffled back to my desk.

Two weeks later when the skirt found its way back into my wardrobe rotation, an email flashed into my inbox. No subject line, body only three words long: Love that skirt. Hitting reply I quickly typed back a perfunctory Thanks. Quick as can be, a response: I'm a big fan of plaid, is all. I was blind enough to think that was all there was to it.

It wasn't until a week later at the annual company dinner that I saw how vile it all was. Within minutes of walking into the banquet room he was by my side, leaning too close. "I was hoping you would wear that red skirt." Already I could smell the alcohol on his breath. "Um no," I began smiling, trying to pass it off on the booze, the jovial celebration of the evening. "I wore this one instead."

"It's nice," he was leering at my legs. "But that red school-girl skirt is hot. Don't take this the wrong way, but when I see you in that skirt, I always want to trip you."

"Trip me?" I was utterly confused. My brain was already throbbing with a warning, which I ignored in favor of politeness. Thank Mom for my good upbringing.

"Trip you so you fall down and I get a glimpse up your skirt, up those long lovely legs of yours."

My brain was screaming, politeness be damned. "Right," I took a step back. Still trying to make light of it, I clucked my tongue at him. "Now, now...don't say something you might regret." I was giving him an out. I looked around quickly and spotted Lisa. She waved at me. "I gotta go, Lisa's waiting for me."

"Thank you," I breathed when I reached Lisa and the bar. "White wine," I told the bartender, fanning my flushed face.

"What's up?" Lisa asked me, sipping on her vodka gimlet.

"I think he's had a bit too much to drink already," I tried to sound forgiving. Everyone drinks too much at these things. The previous year I had enjoyed too many glasses of pino grigo, and at the end of the evening clumsily spilled the water I was drinking in an effort to sober up all over my lap. "Can you just keep an eye out, yeah?"

"Yeah."

But he kept popping up throughout the dinner. Leering at me. Leaning in too close. Talking to my tits instead of my face. Surrounding coworkers did their best to shield me, but he wouldn't be thwarted. How do you shield someone from a hurricane of drunken sexism? They themselves fell victim to the same behavior they were trying to protect me from. After the dinner, he showed up at the bar, leaning to sloppily whisper in my ear.

"I would love to take you back to my hotel room and stick my giant cock in you."

"Dude?!"

"I would. I'd love to get up that plaid skirt of yours, you nasty bitch."

You've heard about this. You've seen after school specials, Lifetime made-for-TV movies, and read stories in the paper. If it'd happened to me, you think, I'd stand up for myself. I'd slap his filthy mouth soundly, report the son-of-bitch to HR and make sure he never did something like this to another girl.

But you don't. You cave to the bullshit polite behavior. Because you feel embarrassed, gross, and wrong.

"...I...," I searched around for a nice way to extract myself and shoot him down at the same time. "See, now why don't unmarried guys my own age ever hit on me?" I thought I was pointedly telling him that I was not interested, to leave me alone. But he was far too drunk to grasp my remarks.

"Probably because of your weight. You'd be so much more fuckable if you lost 10 pounds."

Game over. Never mind that it's all a bit rich coming from someone who is a sodding drunk off his ass, bald, overweight sleezebag. I hated myself.

I have no idea how I made it home that night, or into the office the next morning. I had to look at his disheveled hungover ass, clad in the rumpled clothing he slept in. I had to stand there as his vile breath hollowly told me he was sorry, that he liked me a lot, and that I didn't deserve to be spoken to in that manner.

Because I wanted to do everything to just fucking forget already, I accepted his apology. I didn't want to be the prude bitch that called him out on his prick sore behavior. I didn't want to deal.

It wasn't until days later that I realized that I wasn't the only one. There were others that night. There were others in years past.

It was my manager who approached me about the matter. She was fuming that this had happened to me, apologetic, ready to fight on my behalf. And she did. She talked to the head of HR, and his manager.

The end result was he got yet another slap on his wrist and barred from drinking at company functions. His behavior that night was not a "fire-able offense" and because I hadn't gone through "official channels" there was only a "second hand complaint." Whatever that all means.

When this happens, you go through days of hating yourself, even though you did nothing wrong, save wearing a skirt that happened to capture his perverted attention. You know everyone in the office knows what happened, and you want to spend days huddled under blankets not worrying about who's looking at you or what they're saying. You begin to question yourself and your judgment -- maybe it wasn't as bad as you thought. He just said some not-nice things. What, can't you take it? Stand up for yourself? You feel weak. Like a baby. Like a whiny girl who runs crying to mommy when the school-yard boys pick on her.

You begin secretly taking diet pills. Because, don't you know, you'd be so much more fuckable if you lost 10 pounds. Maybe that's why you don't have a boyfriend. You wear baggy clothes. You hate that he's had this effect on you. You fake smile and plow on ahead. You manage to get over it. You move on, grow, learn, slowly start to feel better about yourself.

But that skirt. I didn't wear it for a year. It hung in my closet, forlorn and ignored. Every time I considered it, his voice would be in my head, "That red school-girl skirt is hot."

I'm telling you this story for a reason. I still have to face him everyday. Whatever, I'm over it. It's all done with, and 2 years later I'm done being angry and embarrassed. But now I've heard murmurs of other girls feeling "uncomfortable" around him. And because I couldn't ignore that and wish for it to go away, I risked being a tattle-tale and possibly losing someone's trust by telling it to a manager. Because I don't want them to have to go through what I did. Because if it should happen to them, and I had prior knowledge but done nothing to prevent it, I would have never forgiven myself.

It took a long time for me to wear that skirt again, but I am wearing it today.

Fuck you. I'm not your sexist, demeaning, school-girl fantasy. It's about my nostalgia and memories. It's about me feeling good in something I like to wear.

Today I've reclaimed plaid.