In my Irish Fiction class, we read a book called Milkman. It's set in Belfast, in the late 1970s, and is about an eighteen-year-old girl who is being stalked by a local paramilitary known only as Milkman. The narrator is telling her story 20 years after the fact, and reflects on not having the language to describe what was happening to her at the time:

At the time, age eighteen, having been brought up in hair-trigger society where the ground rules were—if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being  levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn’t there? At eighteen I had no proper understanding of encroachment. 

Our professor told us to start the book early, as the prose is dense and students have found it difficult in the past. On the day before we were supposed to have it read, I stayed in at school for an evening class. On my way there, I came across a girl the in the Irish course, in the year below me, with her copy of Milkman open on her lap. She was still in the first half.

"How are you finding it?" I asked her.

She said it was difficult, but that she was enjoying it. She said the descriptions of the protagonist's psychological deterioration resonated with her, as she herself had been stalked earlier this year.

I shouldn't have asked about it, but I did. I was surprised. I asked her if it was someone at the university, and then immediately said I was sorry, because, really, who would want to disclose the details of their being stalked to an acquaintance. She said it was okay, but that she wasn't going to answer me. I went to class and tried to forget about the whole thing.

A few weeks later, I was sitting with some people in our department's student lounge, discussing the works we had read for that course. They were all heavy, but we all agreed that Milkman was the darkest. One guy said that he was afraid that the book would end with the protagonist surrendering to Milkman's attempts to coerce her into an affair, but that he was glad that it didn't. Not as dark as it could have been, in other words. This seemed to me a correct assessment, so didn't think much more of it before we all dispersed for the day.

The next afternoon, we were in a communications class. We have been discussing democratic discourse and demagogic discourse; rhetorics of civility and incivility. That day we were discussing when and how incivility crosses the line into verbal abuse. Before giving us information on the rhetoric of abuse, our professor asked us to define the word for ourselves. What do we think "abuse" is? Then she asked if anyone would share their answers. The guy who the previous day had expressed relief that the protagonist of Milkman had thrown off her stalker gave a long, convoluted definition of "abuse" that hit a lot of contemporary leftist talking points. Nothing he said was incorrect, and I didn't disagree with him, but I had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes. It is well-known that this guy is, by his own repeated admission, "really into leftist politics" and that he seems to use these as a front to say inappropriate things to his female classmates.

That night, some of us from the department go to some clubs downtown. I am reminded of the club scenes in Milkman, which feature poisonings and attempted shootings, and which were some of my favourites in the book. As we are talking, the name of the wannabe-leftist comes up. He said something weird to one of our friends--no surprise there. We talk about how we're glad we'll be rid of him soon. I guess we forgot about the presence of our one-year-younger acquaintance, who will be staying on behind with him after we graduate (wannabe-leftist is older than us, but has been lingering in our department for years and years). I notice that younger acquaintance doesn't look quite well, and against my better judgement, I ask what's wrong.

"Remember when we were reading Milkman, and I told you that I was stalked?"

It takes us a moment, but we all gasp. We knew he made us uncomfortable, but we didn't realize it was as bad as this. Younger acquaintance tells us about how she didn't have the words to describe what was happening to her. How being polite didn't work. How she finds it hard not to be polite. How eventually he "got the message." How she felt mean delivering it. We swear that we'll have her back--that we'll all have each other's backs--from now on.

I think of how much has changed since the 1970s, and how much hasn't. Men like this are the same, no matter what political climate they're in. Encroachment is easier now. How different our lives are from a fictional eighteen-year-old's during the Troubles, and how similar.