Dear, dear readers, I’ve been dealing with a whole lot of stupid lately (including a student who was convinced I was out to get her and just finding out that I’m not getting paid at one of my jobs). It’s bad enough having to handle it at all, but worse, it’s pulling my attention away from my duties, my family, and my blog-family, too. I don’t like it one bit. And while I don’t advocate yelling, I have been daydreaming of elegant and/or devastating retaliations and razor-sharp letters of resignation.
Alas, I am no Carrie White, and I’m far too familiar with l’esprit d’escalier, so they will probably remain only daydreams. But I do love a good revenge story. The Shawshank Redemption, The Color Purple, Wharton’s Kerfol, even Euripides’s Medea, as horrible as hers is.
So indulge me, if only to keep me from submitting my two-weeks-notice this afternoon. In today’s FFT, I invite you to share your favorite revenge story, whether it’s from a film or literary source or your own life. Have you ever savored the salty tang of personally delivered justice? Watched a wrongdoer get their comeuppance while you took the day? Reveled in a long-deferred spotlight and noted others seething with jealousy or longing? I want all the gory details.
I’ve found that the best revenge is living a happy, strong existence.
I was bullied as a kid for, well… everything about me. The main bully wound up attending a different middle school from me, and then we fed into the same high school. So, I didn’t see him for about three years, in which time I became a lot more confident and partially grew out of my ugly duckling phase (although it took another 4 or 5 years to leave it behind completely).
One day, I was wearing a brand new outfit, complete with hot pink fishnet tights and combat boots. I felt great about myself, so I went up to him and asked if he remembered me. He said yes, so I responded, “Good. This is what happens to the fat girl you make fun of.” and walked away. Did he feel bad for making my life Hell as a kid? Probably not, but it felt fantastic.
My first job out of undergrad was at a mortgage company were I worked as an underwriter. It was the WORST. the mortgage loan guys were like, the worst assholes ever. PLUS just for funsies they sexually harassed every woman who crossed the threshold of the place. They were also shady as hell (sub prime, ramming mortgages through, whole 9) so once I had another job lined up I quit. But I have harbored this revenge fantasy that involves me being employed in a legal capacity for some sort of regulatory agency and I am instrumental in charging and prosecuting them in all types of mortgage fraud. They’d be all like, “Isn’t this a conflict of interest? She worked for us and left under acrimonious circumstances!” and I’d assure my boss (whoever) “I can be completely impartial here its not an issue” HA! but it’d be a total lie.
Also I love Kill Bill. Ultimate revenge film.
I think I mentioned this before, but I love wronged-woman-takes-revenge movies. Like Enough with JLo, Teeth, etc. I like Kill Bill but it’s a little too technical–more about perfect fight choreography, less about raw anger.
But listen. Do not watch “Descent” with Rosario Dawson! It’s about her character taking revenge on her rapist, but the revenge is SO disturbing, there was nothing vicariously fun about it.
Have y’all seen the movie Prey for Rock in Roll? One of the ladies is dating this guy who is trying to convince her to act out his rape fantasy; when the time comes she pulls out a gun and shoots him (with blanks, sadly) and says she figured out her fantasy is to shoot her rapist.
That dude goes on to rape someone else, and the main character (Gina Gershon) tattoos RAPIST on his forehead.
@bellacoker: that sounds AWESOME.
Well, I don’t know if this is one of those apocryphal urban myths, but I’m partial to it, regardless.
Guy dumps girl. She finds out he was two-timing her with a mutual friend and that the loved-up couple are now going away for a long weekend. Jilted lady still has key to guy’s swanky apartment – which he is extremely proud of, is spotlessly tidy and contains expensive designer furniture. She fills watering can, waters every surface in said apartment and scatters handfuls of cress seeds. Three days later, guy returns to swanky apartment to find it entirely covered in cress.
In college I lived in a dorm suite with a particularly hateful group of girls who decided that I had wronged them. They held a suite meeting to decide whether or not they would be throwing me out (in retrospect, they really couldn’t but they could’ve made my life miserable enough that I’d leave) and I held my ground, calmly responding to their accusations. After a vote (I kid you not!) they decided I could stay, but they basically shunned me for the rest of the semester.
The revenge part? I flew under the radar, minding my own business, and since they needed drama they started picking on one another. Fighting ensued, three ended up moving out, and my roommate moved to take the spot one of the other roommates (they assumed I’d be reassigned a new roommate). So with three of us left in a suite meant for six, I ended up not getting a new roommate and had a whole bedroom to myself for a semester- the other two shared a room and the third bedroom was locked up. Then at the end of the year, the two who were left approached me about getting a suite for the next year and they had already picked a roommate for me (how…nice?). I, however, took a special delight in telling them that I was moving to my own apartment. They ended up rooming with strangers for our senior year.
The end.
‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ has a cool-headed revenge scene—well, relatively cool-headed, given the assault which prompted it.
Although I haven’t read the sequel, I think these events figure in the plot.
As for my own revenges, eh, not so much. I prefer to walk away clean and not let the perp infect me any longer.
Still, I do enjoy a good revenge fantasy.
@absurdbeats: Since she decided to let him live, that scene was pretty much the ultimate revenge.
One of my Virginia friends, upon discovering that her fiancee was cheating on her with a longtime friend, procured some latex gloves and a handful of wet poison ivy leaves, which she then proceeded to rub into the crotch of every pair of briefs and boxers that heowned. She then carefully folded them, packed them up and delivered them to Cheating Hound Dog at the other woman’s house. Not only did he have a horrible, painful rash for weeks, it apparently took him a LONG time and multiple doctor’s visits to convince the other woman that he didn’t have herpes.
Wow, Becky, that woman is my hero. Well played.
I went to a teeny tiny college – 1600 kids – of no renown to speak of, and the provincial politics that ran rampant in the administration were legendary. Long story short, I was unjustifiably accused and disciplined for THREATENING a staff member. Total bullshit. We had words, yes, but they got no more heated than, “Penny, you are impertinent, do you know what that means?” and I said, “Staff Member, I am LIVID, do you know what THAT means?” Then I told her I’d be happy to file a grievance with the Dean if she’d prefer someone else address the problem since it did not appear that we were getting anywhere productive on our own. Apparently my “threat” to “file a grievance” translated into a disciplinary citation for “threatening a staff member” – e.g., making some sort of threat of physical harm. I appealed up several levels, eventually came before the Dean of Students, he AGREED WITH ME that the citation was unwarranted, but yet he REFUSED to take it out of my file. I was applying to law schools at the time; most top-tier schools are not looking for students who make threats against school faculty and staff.
Fortunately, I got into a good school anyway, and now I’m an attorney making reasonably good money. And I get phone calls every fall from students soliciting donations. And every time they call me, I tell them to send an email to Dean XXXX saying I will be happy to donate $1000 if he would give me a call and ask for it himself. He has yet to take me up on that offer, but at least I know every year he gets an email and has to think about what a spineless asshole he is. It’s not much, but it’s does give me a bit of pleasure to think about him receiving that email year after year. At least he can’t forget what a douche he was.
Oh, and I also named the villain in the moot court problem I wrote after him. So nationwide, anyone who did the National First Amendment Competition got to vehemently excoriate Dean XXXX’s reprehensible actions, and I got to score them on how well they did it. That was fun.
This is going to make me sounds like a terrible person, but here goes:
My second year of grad school, the faculty member who was the chair of the department pulled me aside to tell me how he couldn’t believe that I had been allowed to teach undergrads. Long story short, he called me unqualified and basically said that I was teaching my students incorrect things. He had never seen me teach, never had me in a class, never had any contact with me apart from perfunctory meetings with the whole department.
When I protested and tried to defend myself, he told me that he couldn’t understand why I was so shocked since my imbecility was more than likely evidenced by my grades.
Needless to say, I just started crying.
Then, he made one of the secretaries get my file to prove that I had gotten . . . all A’s.
Did he apologize? No. Did he mistake me for someone else? Probably. Did he care? No.
A few years later, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Karma.
@absurdbeats and BeckyS; say no more! I’m reading the sequel to “Dragon Tattoo”, which I didn’t realize was a sequel until I was too involved in the story to stop reading it (like about 15 pages). It has a lot of spoilers itself, but I’m hoping some surprises will be left when I get to it.
I’ve worked in 2 bookstores and been forced to leave both of them, both because of low-quality managers. The first time I was fired because the assistant manager didn’t like all the questions I asked about the business and the way we were operating the store. (I do ask a lot of questions, and, as this blog has showed, sometimes that gets me in trouble, but these were in no way hostile or threatening questions. I just wanted to learn about the book business.) She complained to the manager, who was her bff. They had both been transferred from the same store and were very tight, and the manager didn’t have a lot of self-confidence since this was her first managerial position, her husband was still in the previous city and she didn’t know anyone here. So the assistant sent a fake email out from my store account to another employee, accusing her of slacking off, and signed it with the name of the company’s owner. Then they fired me, for reasons they refused to disclose.
I happened to find out about the email when I emailed my former co-workers to thank them for being great to work with. The woman who had received the fake email was, understandably, extremely upset. When we figured out what had happened, I contacted the corporate HR person, demanded an apology, and let them know that they’d be hearing from my attorney if one wasn’t forthcoming. Shortly thereafter, I received the apology and decided to leave it at that.
The revenge part? The assistant was fired and the manager was demoted and sent back to her original store.
I’ve learned that people who don’t like questions are, in general, not to be trusted.
In the final scene of “Sleeping with the Enemy” (a Julia Roberts vehicle), she has her abusive husband lying on the floor at gunpoint (after she faked her own death and he STILL tracked her down), and she calls 911 and says, “Hello, police? I’ve just shot an intruder.”
Live Through This by Hole, one of my all-time favorite albums, along with half of Fiona Apple’s songs, are pretty cathartic revenge music.
S.O.A.L.G.! It’s good to see you back!
Mine involves my ex-husband, though it’s not near as good as Becky’s story.
Last year I met and fell madly in love with a local guy who worked with me at my field site in Nicaragua (he who saved my dissertation, in the story which I told in a thread last month). Even though I knew it was way too soon, we got married after 6 months because I was going back to the States and wanted him to come with me. I have enough experience with LDRs to know they don’t work, and as tourist visas are basically impossible to come by for Nicaraguans, it was get married or goodbye.
So you know how the story goes. We get married, and almost overnight he morphs from sweet, kind, loving, non-drinking, funny man to arrogant, lying, heavy-drinking, machista jerk who wanted nothing from me other than my money. He gave every indication of cheating on me (though I could never prove it), then he sold a computer I’d loaned him to get involved in some sketchy gang business – and, of course, lies to me about it. Needless to say, he was kicked straight to the curb. Then he even lied about whether or not we were legally married until, on a hunch, I confronted him 6 weeks later!
It was rough on me, of course, but he had it so much worse. He was too embarrassed to tell anyone, so he spent the next 2-3 months lying to all his friends and family (with whom he lived) about us still being together. And for the next 6 months he couldn’t find any work at all and literally didn’t have a penny to his name, and when he did finally find a job it paid $1/day. Even in Nicaragua that’s nothing. Whereas he could have been living comfortably with me here in the States. He also nearly went to jail (and trust me, Nicaraguan prison is not a place you want to be!). He went from being Mr. Popularity and Riches (our marriage gave him high status in his poor town) to being amongst the poorest in town.
He got himself into this mess, but it serves him right! I do feel bad, though, for his daughter – who is in a bad situation and who we were going to try to adopt. Thanks to his arrogance and stupidity, she’s still stuck there. I still worry about her sometimes.
I once spit into a “co-worker’s” coffee cup. Before he arrived in the morning. I felt so much better just seeing him sipping his morning coffee with that little added extra ingredient.
@viajera: Dude deserved what he got, and has nobody but himself to blame for it. That sounds like a classic example of what Shakespeare meant when he said, “the whirligig of Time will bring in his revenges.” (AKA karma is a bitch).
@Tooziss: When I worked for the boss from hell, and she made me go out and buy her coffee every morning and never paid me back…I may have done a little spit action myself.
It’s a bit lame, but this memory of my mother (sort of) always makes me giggle.
I was driving my mother back from a visit to my sister – a four-hour drive. We were about halfway home and doing about 70 mph, which was just a wee bit over the speed limit of 65. A red Mustang blew past us – the guy had to be doing at least 80 and probably more.
My mother got very annoyed. “That just burns me up. I can’t believe it. How come he gets away with that?” I said, trying to calm her down, “don’t worry, he’ll get his, one day. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
Well, not more than 15 minutes later, there was the little red Mustang, parked on the side of the highway, state trooper vehicle parked behind, lights flashing. Well, my mother cackled like you wouldn’t believe. Given that she’d been battling against the cancer that was slowly killing her for several years by then, that was the first time I heard that distinctive sound in a long time. That started ME laughing, and periodically on the ride home, one or the other of us would just start giggling. I even loved hearing her tell other people the story.
Stieg Larsson’s books have great revenge scenes in them.
Though I would recommend them not just for their revenge content, but also as a good read.
The greatest revenge story, for me, is still The Count of Monte Cristo.
I’d love to see a film version that dwells on Valentine’s and Haydee’s pieces of the narrative: lesbian crossdressers, drug addiction and trafficking, Europeans committing war crimes in the Middle East, etc. And a lot of deeply feminist themes.
So bored of swashbuckling b.s. when the novel is so rich and textured.
Oh, christine, one to add to my list. I only know the melodramatic stage version, which kept me from the novel. Sounds positively ripe.
This is very late to the party, but…
When I was 19, my spent-every-moment-of-our lives-together boyfriend of 2 years moved to another continent. He called me every few days (NOT cheap in those pre-Skype days!) and we were making plans for me to transfer over there. Then I got tonsillitis for the first time in my life, misdiagnosed by student health, spent three weeks in bed feeling terrible… Just at the end of this one of my good friends sneaks into my res at 2am and tells me there’s someone I have to meet. I get bundled into the car, driven to a local club, and there I meet my boyfriend’s OTHER girlfriend, the one he’d been having sex with for the last 9 months in the hours he’d told me he was at his part-time job. Who didn’t know about me and was a very lovely person — we became pretty good friends until I moved and we lost touch.
So I was a little upset, invited her over to my res the next night, and waited for him to call as promised. Then got her to answer the phone.
I still remember the exact tone of his voice as he said “oh. shit.”